LIFE photographers ventured to this picturesque city many times for many reasons—popping in on Peggy Guggenheim, for example—but this story is built off two shoots by Dmitri Kessel. Both were done in the 1950s, and they are very different. Kessel shot Venice in 1959 during the peak of summer with a focus on the American tourists who thronged there, and the other shoot was done in 1952, in winter, when the streets were largely empty and also flooded in areas, as tends to happen that time of year.

The moods could not be more different. During the summer a navy of gondoliers rule the waterways and visitors fill Piazza San Marco, or St. Mark’s Square, while in the winter those boats are all tied up. The two constants are the stunning architecture and the pigeons. Even in the winter, a local woman finds the time to give the birds a little attention.

The real message of this shoots is that Venice is beautiful in every circumstance.

American tourists sightseeing in Venice, Italy, 1959.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

American tourists in Venice, Italy, 1959.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

American tourists in a gondola in Venice, Italy, 1959.

Dmitri Kessel/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Tourists in a gondolas, Venice, Italy, 1959.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Americans in Venice, Italy, 1959.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

American tourists in Venice, Italy, 1959.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

American tourists gathering in Saint Mark’s Square in Venice, Italy, 1959.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

American tourists in Venice, Italy, 1959.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

American tourists in Venice, Italy, 1959.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

American tourists in a gondola, Venice, Italy, 1959.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

American tourists in Venice, Italy, 1959.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Venice, Italy, 1959.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Moored gondolas on a foggy Grand Canal in Venice, 1952.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Doge’s Palace on a rainy day in the Piazza San Marco in Venice, 1952.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Pedestrians threading their way along makeshift wooden sidewalk across a flooded Piazza San Marco during its usual winter condition, 1952.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A flooded Venice, Italy in the winter of 1952.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Moored gondola on Grand Canal in front of Piazza San Marco during off-season in Venice, 1952.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Moored gondolas in canal that runs between ancient buildings of Venice, 1952.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The flooded Piazza San Marco during off-season in Venice, Italy, 1952.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Venice, Italy during off-season, 1952.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A local woman fed the pigeons in the Piazza San Marco on a rainy day, 1952.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Pigeons flocking above pedestrians crossing Piazza San Marco on a rainy Venice day, 1952.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post Vintage Venice, In and Out of Season appeared first on LIFE.

LIFE’s biggest Bangkok photo shoot, and the one which supplied most of the images in this story, was done by Dmitri Kessel in 1950, for a story that ran in a 1951 issue of the magazine devoted entirely to the wonders of Asia.

In that issue LIFE declared Bangkok “the most impressive Buddhist city in all the world.” Here’s that declaration in its fuller context, as part of a larger ode of praise:

The city is laced by placid canals on which housewives ride in sampans to market, scented in perfume, which the Siamese love, and lulled by the endless soft tinkling of tiny silver bells that swing from the ornate eaves of the temples. The streets swarm with yellow-robed priests.

All things in Bangkok—the temples, bells, priests and people—combine in honoring the Lord Buddha, and they make Bangkok the most impressive Buddhist city in all the world. Its serenity, almost unique in Asia’s cities now, is rooted in that religion, and because of it, Bangkok is the one city that still fulfills the most romantic fairytale dreams of the Orient. It is Buddhism’s remarkable monuments that seem to lift Bangkok up from its plain into a never-never-sky that even the most unimpressionable Westerner might think was heaven’s own curtain.

Kessel’s photographs do show Buddhist shrines, and that is what the magazine emphasized in its coverage, but he also captured everyday street scenes as his eye wandered. One of the most striking images was taken on the rural outskirts of the city, and shows local farm girls gathered underneath a billboard for Coca-Cola.

LIFE’s other ventures to Bangkok include a shoot by Howard Sochurek for a 1955 story headlined “The Path of Buddhism.”

And in 1948 Jack Birns went to Bangkok to document the combat sport known as Muay Thai. Birns’ photos did have a Buddhist element, as he captured fighters praying in the ring before going at each other. Today the sport is more familiar to Westerners, owing to the popularity of mixed martial arts and also the use of Muay Thai training in workout routines. But back in 1948 LIFE presented the sport as an exotic oddity. The magazine’s story concluded “If at the end of three five-minute rounds both principals have managed to avoid hospitalization they often embrace, possibly because they are relieved that the ordeal is over.”

A billboard on the outskirts of Bangkok, 1950.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Temple of Emerald Buddha in the center of Bangkok, 1950.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The inner courtyard near Buddhitst shrine in Bangkok, 1950.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Buddha in the caves of Phetchaburi, south of Bangkok, was the destination of many pilgrimages, 1950.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ruins of the 37-foot Buddha in Bangkok, 1950.

Dmirtri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

In Bangkok a man sold melons in a floating market, 1950.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Fishing in canal near Don Mueang airport, which serves Bangkok, 1950.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Farm girls going fishing in a canal near Bangkok, 1950.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Chinese dyers with their cotton material hanging in the yards, Bangkok, 1950.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A mother gave her baby a bath in Bangkok, 1950.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Chinese graveyard in center of Bangkok, 1950.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bangkok, 1950.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bangkok, 1950.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Arann Reongchai (left) and Prasong Chaimeeboon during a Muay Thai boxing match, 1948.

Jack Birns/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The ref counts out a competitor in a Muay Thai match, Bangkok, 1948.

Jack Birns/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Monks begging for food at dawn on main thoroughfare of Bangkok, 1954.

Howard Sochurek/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Monks walking outside a Buddhist temple in Bangkok, 1954.

Howard Sochurek/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A billboard in Bangkok, 1950.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Billboard advertising in Bangkok, 1950.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Cockfighting in Bangkok, 1950.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A canal vendor sold bean sprouts in Bangkok, 1950.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A water buffalo, Bangkok, 1950.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post Bangkok: “The Most Impressive Buddhist City in All the World.” appeared first on LIFE.

Although the rest of Kessel’s Easter photographs were not published at the time, notes filed in the LIFE archives make it possible to learn a good deal about his trip to Jerusalem. It was common practice at the time for a reporter, correspondent or researcher who would go uncredited in the final story to accompany a photographer on his or her trip. That person would file notes to someone at the magazine, who would use them to craft the language that went with the photographs. Those notes would then be filed away, most likely not to be consulted again, but archived for future research. These particular notes were bound for reporter Jane Wilson, who presumably wrote the photo captions that ran in the magazine, via George Caturani of the magazine’s foreign news service, from Mathilde Camacho of the Paris bureau.

“There were so many celebrations and so many ceremonies going on almost simultaneously during the Easter celebrations in Jerusalem, and so many communities involved that it is difficult to know which is the best way to set them down for you,” Camacho began.

She described the goings-on at the Latin Church, the Greek Orthodox Church, the Armenian church, the Coptic Church, the Syrian Orthodox Church, the Abyssinian Church and the Protestant Churches, witnessed during a long weekend of rites and celebration. Though her detailed captions are difficult to pair with the images after so many decades, they provide insight into the meaning of that time in that place for those people.

“Most of the pilgrims were really old,” she notes in the caption for a photograph of three elderly women from Cyprus who had come with a group of about 1,500 Greek Orthodox pilgrims, “and had been saving for years in order to get enough money for the sea fare from Cyprus to Beiruth and then either the air or the bus fare to Jerusalem.”

Those women, like so many others whom Camacho and Kessel met in Jerusalem, saw their voyage to the Holy Land as a crowning experience in a lifetime full of faith. The pomp and ritual seen in these images is, then, an appropriate reflection of both the joy and solemnity of the Easter season.

Original caption: “At Garden Tomb on Easter, Protestants from England and the U.S. hold services with Rev. A. P. Clark of London presiding and Dr. Billy James Hargis of Tulsa, Okla. (left of table) preaching. Many feel this spot outside Jerusalem more truly represents Christ’s tomb than the Holy Sepulcher inside the city.”

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Easter in the Holy Land, 1955.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Easter in the Holy Land, 1955.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Easter in the Holy Land, 1955.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Easter in the Holy Land, 1955.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Easter in the Holy Land, 1955.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Easter in the Holy Land, 1955.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Easter in the Holy Land, 1955.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Easter in the Holy Land, 1955.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Easter in the Holy Land, 1955.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Easter in the Holy Land, 1955.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Easter in the Holy Land, 1955.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Easter in the Holy Land, 1955.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Easter in the Holy Land, 1955.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Easter in the Holy Land, 1955.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post Easter in Jerusalem: LIFE Takes a Pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1955 appeared first on LIFE.

Was Stonehenge a place of worship? Probably. A kind of massive, three-dimensional calendar? Maybe. A pilgrimage site for the sick? Perhaps. A beacon for extraterrestrials?

A beacon for extraterrestrials? Anyone?

What one can say with certainty about Stonehenge, the Grand Canyon, Egypt’s pyramids, Machu Picchu, the Brooklyn Bridge and other natural and human-made wonders is that, in their presence, the imagination is likely to stir. We’re in awe before them, even when we know—as with Stonehenge, Machu Picchu, Chichen Itza—that we’re gazing on a mere shadow of what was once a far more extensive, elaborate and vibrant complex.

But that, too, is part of the profound allure of these places: having fallen into ruin, they still possess a genuine grandeur.

[Buy the LIFE book, Wonders of the World]

Here, thousands of years after its first stones were erected on England’s Salisbury Plain, LIFE pays tribute with a single photograph to the structure itself, and to the long-vanished people who envisioned and built Stonehenge. One of many pictures LIFE’s Dmitri Kessel made on assignment in England in 1955, this photo manages to capture what feels like an utterly contemporary scene the picture might have been made moments ago while also somehow evincing the mystery and majesty of a departed world.

Stonehenge, photographed in 1955.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The post Stonehenge: Mystery and Majesty in an Old Color Photo appeared first on LIFE.

The title of a 1957 feature on Brazil published in LIFE magazine was: “Growing Pains of a Big Country: Ambitious Brazil Has Great Riches, Fine Prospects — and Big Problems.” The operative word here, of course, is “big,” as Brazil is huge in many ways, not least in geographic size (the 5th largest country on earth) and in population (200 million people).

But enormous troubles—many of which stem, at least in part, from the country’s endemic corruption —have held Brazil back from realizing its phenomenal economic potential. A story with a similar headline could easily be written today. This gallery features color photos made when beautiful, troubled Brazil was enduring “growing pains” not dissimilar to what it has gone through in more recent times.

Rio’s peaks, while beautiful, also strangled traffic. Still, they made a lovely sight at dusk.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1957.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Decrepit engines, such as this 1904 wood burner on the Belem-Braganca run, plagued railroads. The eucalyptus logs they burned gave off the fragrance of cough medicine.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The basin of the Amazon river was home to 3.5 million people, a number of them recently arrived from Japan and Puerto Rico.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Brazil, 1957.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Brazil, 1957.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

This U.S.-built Dam, Peixoto, was constructed by a subsidiary of the U.S.-owned American and Foreign Power Company to serve industrial centers outside Sao Paulo.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Brazil, 1957.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Rio, 1957.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Brazil, 1957.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Brazin’s old capital was Salvador, north of Rio in the sugar-growing country. It lost its position to Rio in 1763, after gold was discovered farther South. Salvador is a double city, the lower part (foreground) built along the harbor, and the upper part, with churches, monasteries that date to 17th Century, on a high bluff.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Picking cotton, Brazil, 1957.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

This coffee plantation stood in the terra rosa (purple earth) territory of the state of Parana. The plantation, or fazenda, had its own little village of warehouses, workers’ houses and stores (center), surrounded by symmetrical rows of thousands of coffee trees 5 to 12 feet high. Each of these trees produced about one pound of coffee each year. The country produced almost half the world’s supply.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A new capital was being built in Brasilia by workers who lived in a cluster of 2,000 temporary wooden buildings. Traders from the nearby cities came to sell dry goods and razor blades from suitcases on the streets. There was no finished road to the site and practically all traffic in and out was by plane.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1957.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

LIFE magazine, Oct. 21, 1957.

LIFE magazine, Oct. 21, 1957.

LIFE magazine, Oct. 21, 1957.

LIFE magazine, Oct. 21, 1957.

LIFE magazine, Oct. 21, 1957.

LIFE magazine, Oct. 21, 1957.

The post Brazil in the Fifties: Portrait of a Beautiful, Troubled Country appeared first on LIFE.

Whatever. For the rest of the world, the Eiffel Tower is and has long been one of the singular architectural emblems anywhere on earth: a formidable, graceful, soaring structure that connotes Paris as surely and as indelibly as the Empire State Building, Il Duomo, Hagia Sophia and other enduring landmarks signify their own great, respective cities.

Here, LIFE considers the phenomenal edifice through a single picture: Dmitri Kessel’s classic 1948 portrait of La Dame de Fer as seen on a winter’s day.

Perhaps it’s the absence of a single, visible human form that lends Kessel’s photograph its timeless power. Maybe it’s the ill-defined look of the structure, almost phantasmal as it looms in the Parisian fog, that somehow draws the viewer even deeper into the scene—as if, given enough time, the fog itself might clear and, even as we watch, the spire might grow more defined in the stark winter light.

Whatever the source of this one picture’s abiding appeal, the allure of the tower itself remains undimmed 125 years after wondering, awestruck crowds first encountered what was then, and remained for the next four decades, the tallest manmade structure on the planet.

Eiffel Tower, 1948

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post The Eiffel Tower: A Paris Landmark Captured in a Classic Photo appeared first on LIFE.